Introduction

Welcome. This section of Aging Is a Family Affair is for all of us who want to age well in our senior years. We want to live healthily enough for the extended times that science is promising us. The thinking for this section emerged from a personal experience. Recently, I endured a six-month allergic reaction to unknown factors. It was weighing me down emotionally, I felt old before my time, and helpless in my many efforts to overcome the problem. Toward the end of the six months, I made an internal turnaround. I took charge of my own destiny and, with doctors’ approval, tried on options that I thought my body could handle. Within a month I was back to normal.

Shortly thereafter, I renewed the tags on my car, and decided to make a statement that I would apply to the rest of my life. The new license plate: AGING WL – for Aging Well. A few months later, it was design time for this website. Of course, we would include a section on aging well.

My hope is that you will share your personal aging well stories here. Some of you will age well without disease, surgery, or major loss. Others of you will age well through illness, chemo, deaths of loved ones, and survival of national disasters (like floods, tornadoes, and earthquakes). Your determination to survive allows you to overcome the dangers on your path. Many of you are reinventing yourselves, learning new skills, traveling more, volunteering in the community. Tell us about it all!

Aging well is a state of mind, and it is a determination to live until you die. Share with us your own success story, your survival story, your live-fully-until-you-die story. Once a month, I’ll profile one of your stories in my half hour video (always with permission) and share my clinical commentary.

May we all be blessed with enough courage to face the hard times, enough love to know that we are important, and enough joy to fuel the lonely times.

ABOUT THE BOOK

"When someone in your family grows older, you discover how important it is to discuss difficult and painful issues. Unfortunately, the issues that demand the most from caregivers... are often the ones families work hardest to avoid. In this life-changing new book, Mary Ann Massey... gives you clear and practical techniques you can begin using immediately...."*